Israel’s invasion of Gaza has driven a wedge between two of the most powerful men in Colombia. The banker Jaime Gilinski, of Jewish origin, has felt almost like a personal attack the position he has taken on the Gustavo Petro conflict, which has come to compare the Israeli offensive with the Holocaust. Gilinski, in a clear snub, was absent last week from the meeting that the president held with the businessmen of the companies with the greatest economic weight in national production. His absence in the group photo taken after the meeting was striking.
“Gilinski is really upset and uncomfortable with the president’s role in this whole matter,” says a source from the company world familiar with what happened. A second source close to the banker confirms this distancing, the consequences of which are difficult to foresee. A staunch defender of the Jewish State, the businessman has attended, stupefied, the criticism that Petro has leveled at Israel for its response to the Hamas attacks on October 7. Without a doubt, Petro has been the most emphatic Latin American president when it comes to denouncing the death of civilians in the Strip.
On the day of the terrorist offensive on Israeli territory, he did not align with the majority of world leaders. That night he did not directly condemn the attack and reiterated his position that Israel is occupying Palestinian territory. In passing, he invited the international community to hold a peace conference to mediate this conflict that has been going on for decades. By comparing the situation in the Gaza Strip with the Auschwitz concentration camp he struck a nerve in the Jewish community, and more specifically in Gilinski, whose ancestors were victims of the Holocaust. Israel, in response, announced on October 15 that it was suspending arms exports to Colombia and summoned the Colombian ambassador, whom it assured that Petro’s statements fueled anti-Semitism and threatened the security of the Jewish community in her country.
Petro responded vehemently: “If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we suspend them. We do not support genocides. “The president of Colombia is not insulted.” Days later the tension was reduced with the meeting that the president held with the ambassadors of Israel and Palestine; yes, separately. The truce lasted a few weeks. On October 31, the president called his ambassador to Israel, Margarita Manjarrez Herrera, for consultations and wrote in X: “If Israel does not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people, we cannot be there.”
The opposition and some political commentators have asked the president to act more diplomatically, but he has been faithful to his ideas and has not retreated even a millimeter from his initial positions. One of the side effects has been to upset Gilinski, a tycoon with whom he has had a good relationship for 13 years. In 2010, when he was a congressman, Petro criticized that, according to him, the authorities favored the GEA – a conglomerate of companies from Antioquia – in its fight with the Colombian Industrial Bank, owned by the Gilinskis. Petro’s own congressional campaign was financed by Banco Sudameris, also owned by the banker. The same thing happened in 2018, the first time Petro tried to storm the presidency. On that occasion, Petro paid half of the expenses with a loan of 5,000 million pesos (1.2 million dollars) from the Gilinski bank.
All of this brought together two people who couldn’t come from more different worlds. Petro comes from a humble family and in his youth he joined a guerrilla. Jaime Gilinski is the son of Isaac Gilinski Sragowicz, who made a fortune in Colombia with the Rimax chair company and Yupi potatoes. Isaac’s parents were Jewish Lithuanian immigrants who fled Europe due to the persecution of their community in the 1920s. However, there is something that the politician and the banker have in common: throughout their lives they have been outsiders. Petro, a very particular ruler, has positioned himself on the left in this century in a country where he has governed the right overwhelmingly, while Gilinski, who has spent a lot of time in the United States, does not belong to the Colombian business nobility.
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It has been in recent years that the Gilinskis, Jaime and their son Gabriel, have fully entered the Colombian market. They launched seven hostile takeover bids against the GEA, a lawsuit that has finally been resolved with the division of the companies. And they have made a foray into the world of media with the purchase of Week and other bankrupt regional newspapers. Week, which Gabriel directly manages and not Jaime, supported without nuances Petro’s rival for the presidency, Rodolfo Hernández. A cover of the publication in which the two appeared became famous with an uneventful headline: “Ex-guerrilla or businessman?” It seemed like Gabriel’s thing, so Jaime could continue maintaining his friendship with Petro.
However, an issue shook that healthy coexistence. Weekwith only one anonymous source, accused Petro of having hidden in his number two, Laura Sarabia, $750,000. The president flatly denied it and published a letter in which he asked the Gilinskis to account: “I have had a friendship with the owners of the magazine.” Week, who have participated in different businesses in the country, from which neither as a congressman nor as president I have derived any type of benefit. The owners of the magazine themselves are first-rate witnesses of my honorability and I have also demonstrated this to them, for example, during my debate as a young parliamentarian on the merger between Banco de Colombia and Banco Industrial Colombiano. Nor did I take advantage during the negotiations of the Gilinski Group and the Antioqueño Business Group, where, on the contrary, I always asked for an agreement to be reached with transparency.
It was then published that the magazine experienced an internal crisis as a result of this revelation that was only supported by an anonymous source and did not even reach the printed edition. The director, Vicky Dávila, always very active on social networks, went three days without tweeting. Petro thought that they were waging a dirty war on a flank that he thought was covered. That crisis between the Gilinskis and Petro was resolved, although something uncomfortable remained floating in the air. People close to Jaime Gilinski claim that he did not go to the president’s meeting with big businessmen because that day a magazine recognized him with an award.
By then, the schism over Israel already existed, and the Gilinskis have not hidden it in table and table conversations with other businessmen. In his opinion, the president’s positions have been radical and have criminalized Jews. Petro has not listened to anyone and has been faithful to the convictions that have accompanied him since his youth, among which is defending the Palestinian cause. That has distanced the banker and the politician who were once friends. Right now they are not going through their best moment.
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